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Look around for a cheap version

Introduction:

for years I kept all my loose change in a piggy bank in my room, it didn't really ever fill up as I used to spend all my change. I first saw this in the discovery store and thought it was a brilliant idea. I needed to save up some money for my holiday last summer so invested in one. I am so glad I did because this gives me an incentive to put away all my spare change and save it for something big! I will now go into more detail on the product and explain why its worth getting.

Price:

These are usually for sale at around £15. The shop I bought it from was closing down and it only cost me £6. They are pretty expensive for what they are. It is basically a hard plastic container with a counter on top. It cant cost them too much to make these, but they charge a lot! My advise iis to shop around and look for a cheaper price as I am sure you will find one. I have seen these in 'the works' for under £10. Also have a look online too.

What does it do?:

You basically put your coins in the slot at the top and it will recognise which coin it is, such as a 1p or a 5p. It then adds it to the total. Its brilliant as you dont have to count yourself. The display is on all the time so it is visable how much you have in there. It works with all British coins, it however can not do notes. To get round this I just place the notes in the pot and put a Pound coin through as many times as the note is worth (5x for a £5 note etc). It is a brilliant way of saving and every penny adds up. I found myself picking up random pennies off the floor in town to add to my collection. I managed to get £400 saved in this last year which paid for a huge bulk of my holiday to Tenerife. This works well most of the time, occasionally it will say it is a different coin to the one you have put through. I find the best way is to put the coins in quickly and hard, this usually does the trick.

Overall:

I would recommend you invest in one of these. It is a fun way to save and you will end up having more money to use later on. They are quite large so you can fit a fair amount of change into them. The price is high. They run off battery's, I have had mine for over a year and havent had to change the battery as of yet. This gets 4 stars from me, excellent product, just a bit expesnsive!

Thanks for reading my review! I hope it helped you.

Josh

jlaker1992

4/5

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Good gadget for savers

We received this money counting jar as a Christmas present from my partner's parents. It was a bit of a joke present because they knew we had quite a bit of saving to do for our wedding, and thought this might help motivate us. We've been using it to save our small change, so that when we reach our target we can have a night out or a takeaway without noticing the money leaving our pockets.

The jar came in a box, as I said it was a gift so I don't know where they got it from or how much it cost. Searching around online, they range from £10 - £20. I remember seeing these in gadget shops when I was doing my own Christmas shopping, they seemed to be everywhere so maybe they're more popular in a recession!

The jar is transparent so you can see your money building up, and it has a screw top lid which has a little display telling you how much money is in the jar. The display is battery operated, I was quite curious at first whether it would constantly show the balance or whether it would just show the balance when it was activated, but the balance is on display all the time. We've had it since Christmas and the battery is still going strong, although I'm not sure what would happen when the battery dies - would it remember the balance or would you have to empty the jar and count it all again?!

Generally speaking, the device is good at recognising the coins you're putting in. You have to press quite hard as the slot has a sort of roller system, and I guess it's something to do with the pressure/weight which allows it to work out what coin you're feeding it. The trick to this is to be quick and decisive, because if you allow the coin to roll back it can confuse the jar and sometimes it reads the wrong coin.

In general though, the counting feature is quite accurate. We have around £17 in ours, and only once or twice has it mistaken the coin for the wrong value. I thought when we first started using this, that it might take the enjoyment out of counting our penny jar (I need to get out more, I realise this), and guessing what the total might be. But in actual fact, it's quite motivating, because you can set a target and you are constantly aware how far off the target you are.

The jar has a decent sized capacity for savings, like I said earlier we have around £17 in ours and it's less than a quarter full, so it would take a while to fill this jar, and by that time we would probably have cashed the coins in to spend on something!

This is a good gadget which is a good way of motivating yourself if you struggle to save, and although it's not always 100% accurate, it's a bit of fun.

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An ok product!

When it comes to saving I like to think that even though I'm on a low income that I'm rather good at it. Like many people I like to keep all my change somewhere, you know coppers and small change and the likes instead of it rattling around in my purse and I'm someone that when I pay for something I never use the change in my purse and use notes and the likes and therefore end up with loads of hanging about.

I spotted this money counting jar in a B & M store costing only £3.00 a while ago and liked the idea if it counting my money for me and I liked the price for such a large looking jar too. I use this jar nowadays to pop all my lose change into for emergency items, bread, milk and the likes!

It came in a box, I won't lie I can't remember very much about the box at all apart from photographs of the money box/jar on the front of it and details and what batteries it takes and contact details for the manufacturer were given and so on.

The Money Jar:

Well it comes in two parts. You get the base part which is large and see through plastic shaped of course like a jar and then the top part of it is grey plastic where you have a small screw off section to place within that 2 aa batteries which incidentally last ages to the underside of it! You then screw that back together to secure the batteries inside and near that section there is a small hole that you can push a small object such a pin into to reset the running total anytime you like.

The top part screws onto the base and on that you get a coin slot and a small digital section that keeps track of the running total of the money you put in.

This recognises all coins but £2.00 ones and its simple to use as long as you push the coin in totally and with one push, if it bounces back slightly cos you havent used enough force then it can count it twice which is slightly annoying. The fact it doesn't recognise £2.00 coins, to me is quite annoying too!

This for me isn't always accurate and of course if you take any money out you can't adjust it, you have to reset it, take your money out and put it all back in and like I say you do need to forcefully push the coins through or it may count it a couple of times so it isnt always accurate.

However this isn't an awful money counting jar, does give room to put alot of money in it but I just find it a bit floored. I would recommend this for the price I paid for it but no more than that really and the only place I have recently seen this sold on is on Amazon at about £6.99 not including postage and packaging.

This review is also posted on Ciao under this same username.

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Stores your money but there can be drawbacks with the coin counting aspect.

A little over a year ago I received one of these digital coin counting money jars from the boffer.co.uk website which has a different product on offer each day. I think it was as part of an offer whereby you got two surprise items for £12 around Christmas time. I was initially quite pleased with what I had received; it looked to be a useful receptacle to store all that annoying loose change that I often end up clearing out of my wallet into various places around my house with the added bonus of the product keeping track of how much I had saved!

The product consists of a strong jar base made up of thick transparent plastic, which is nicely durable with a grey plastic lid which screws onto the main jar. The jar is quite large at 18cm high and with a cross-sectional diameter of about 11cm, so can store a good number of coins. The top of the lid consists of a slot and a digital display. Hidden underneath (which cannot be seen when the jar is screwed closed) is a battery compartment which requires two AAA batteries which I do not think were included. A screwdriver is required in order to open the battery compartment, but otherwise the batteries are very easy to install. I haven't needed to replace the batteries since getting the product so they last a long time.

The coin counter facility works by measuring the size of the coins put inside. As you push a coin through the slot a lever is pushed back to an extent depending on the coin size and the total on the digital display increases appropriately. The sorter recognizes all standard UK coins, including the most recent £2 coin size. One annoying feature is the fact that the total is only displayed in the few seconds following the addition of coins to the jar. This obviously helps to conserve the battery life, but if you are just interested in checking the total you have to find another coin to add to the jar. Another serious draw-back with my jar is the fact that other than completely resetting the total to zero (which is done by sticking a pin into a small hole next to the battery compartment), the total cannot be changed in any way. Obviously, once you have put money into the jar, you are not expected to remove it again. It also means that if you want to put notes into the jar you have to put one of the coins already in the jar through the slot an appropriate number of times such that the total is adjusted accordingly.

I should note that during my research on the internet before writing this review it seems that some models of this jar claim to have the ability to adjust the total, so it may well be that mine is an earlier model. Either way, I would certainly reccomend that this is a facility you look out for if looking to buy such a jar since otherwise the digital coin counting part is pretty much just a gimmick and all you have is a money box. Initially I also had some problems concerning coin recognition with the jar. To get the coins through the slot you have to push quite hard and on some occasions I didn't push the coins hard enough and while the total updated, the coin didn't actually make it through the slot. In some cases, since the lever had only been partially pushed back, the total also updated by a different amount than the coin value and as I have mentioned above, adjusting the total for the jar is very tedious as it basically has to be done manually by choosing the coins you put through the slot. I have, however, been using the jar quite a lot recently to store the income from a few odd jobs I have been doing and am no longer having these problems. I don't know whether it is the product itself that has settled down (e.g. the lever becoming looser) or just that I now know how hard I need to push the coins.

Overall the coin jar is not bad as a fun item and works fine as just a simple money box, but if the counting functionality is important this may not be for you and you should definitely check that your model does include the ability to change the total before buying. These jars are currently available online for a range of prices which start around £5.

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If wanted as a gimic its great, if wanted for the job it's meant then it's not

I bought this from Avon as I was a rep and thought it would be a fun thing to show the customers for a christmas gift. Well there really is no point at least not for the Avon one.

Like most I was collecting all my change in the usual bottle so when this arrived I started to transfer the money into it, well I got to about £3 (quite alot in 1s,2s and 5s) and it suddenly decided my 1p was a 5p. So of course I began thinking maybe it was me, i've put it in too fast, too slow or at the wrong angle. The next thing was when I went to put a 2p in it and didn't quite push it hard enough so it popped back out yet it still counted the 2p.

I decided to try again and reset the counter (small button in the lid) and started again making sure I pushed every coin in just right and it still miscounted at this point I gave up.

My 3 year old now thinks its a great toy (with supervision) and enjoys putting all her coins through the top, only good point is a year and a bit later the battery is still going strong.

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Not worth the money!

I think at Christmas everyone gets a present that is a bit odd and a bit random, well this year that present for me and my fiancé was a Coin Counting Money Jar, something we had not asked for and something which I'm not too sure what we will do with. Anyway we thought as we had it we could give it a try, we do have a big bottle which we save pennies and 5p's in (rather than them being left laying around the house) we did think that if the jar worked maybe we could use it for that, then we would not have to sit and count them all. However after a trial run with the jar, it is now back in its box.

The Money Counting Jar comes in a white square box, on the lid is a large red pound sign and the words Coin Counting Money Jar (written in red) and the digital LCD display (written on black) this information is repeated on 2 sides of the box. Just below this writing is a large picture of the jar inside the box, the picture is very accurate compared to the item which is inside. Right at the bottom of the box is a picture of a red globe and some red swirls, I'm not too sure how this fits in with the actual product. This is also repeated on another side of the box. The following 2 sides of the box contain a small amount of information about the money counting jar, the same pound sign logo and name of the product is written on towards the top of the box as with the other 2 sides, just below is a small paragraph about the jar stating that this "ingenious" devise electronically counts your money as you deposit it into the jar. It also describes how the LCD screen on the top displays the amount of money that has been put into the jar. It is also described as being ideal for both use in the home and the office. Underneath this description of the product are 2 more pictures one showing a hand putting a coin into the jar and the second showing both the slot the coins go into and the LCD display. Written in small writing right at the bottom of the box it says "require 2 x AA batteries not included) That is basically it for the packaging the jar comes in, it is quite plain and simple, there is not actually packaging inside the box to protect the jar it is just sat inside the box, although it does fit quite tightly so is unlikely to move around and get broken, there was also a small piece of paper inside the box, these are the instructions and quite basic demonstrating how to insert the batteries, how to reset the counter and also informing you to insert each coin slowly so counting our large jar of coins was going to be a slow process possibly.

The jar itself is of a reasonable size measuring 16cm high including the lid and about 11cm across so should you wish to save using the jar you would be able to fit quite a lot of coins in it. The main part of the jar is made of totally clear plastic, this feels quite strong and solid and clearly shows you what is inside the jar. The lid is made from silver coloured plastic, it has a white cover on the bottom of it which covers up the battery compartment (this cannot be seen when the lid is on) The lid screws on and off and is very simple to remove. The lid has a raised area which has the coin slot in the middle of it, this is big enough to fit all sized coins, just above this is the LCD display which shows how much money you have in the jar, this is very clear and easy to read. The jar has a very simple appearance, but I was hoping it was going to be successful and save me counting all the coins we had saved.

I decided to sit down and try the jar out one day, I counted out a few pounds worth of coins and started to insert them into the jar. I know counting the coins first defeats the object of the jar but I wanted to know whether it was accurate or not. Firstly I insert 2 AA batteries into the compartment located on the underside of the lid, this was easy to do and the cover of the compartment was very easy to remove and replace, I slowly inserted the coins into the coin slot on top of the jar as instructed and was pleased to see that after a few coins it was correctly adding up the amount. However a few more coins later |I noticed that as I inserted a 5p it only counted it as a 1p, this happened on several occasions meaning that the coin counter was not as accurate as I had thought it was going to be, I found myself having to either start again or unscrew the lid and adjust the amount of coins in it to make the total correct. After a while I had had to make so many adjustments where the coin jar had incorrectly I gave up with it, the time I spent correcting the jar could have been spent counting the money straight from my glass jar I had been using.

As I have mentioned this was a Christmas present but I have since looked the jar up online and found that it can be bought from several sites such as Find Me A Gift and Amazon and the prices range between £5.99 and £7.99, personally I think this is very over priced and a lot of money for this item, especially as it is not overly accurate when it comes to counting coins. Personally I would not pay this amount of money for this item.

Unfortunately I was not too impressed with our Digital Coin Counting Jar, it was a nice idea had it worked and actually counted the coins correctly, I spent far too much time having to correct the jar so that the coins inside matched what the LCD display showed. On the plus side the jar did accept all sized coins and was of a decent size, it would be able to hold a reasonable amount of money. However despite these points the jar was over priced I definitely would not pay this amount of money for and it did not really do what it said it would. The jar may be a better gift for children as it may be a novelty for them to insert the coins in the jar and watch it add up how much is inside it, and although it is a simple design it is not unattractive, but for adults who would actually want it to work and accurately count the money inside it is not the most ideal product to buy.

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Handy little savings jar as long as you dont take any out!

This was another one of my Dooyoo prizes that I received just before Christmas, and the kids love this one (which was actually quite good as we bought our eldest a pink one!!)

I had never used one of these digital coin counters before, the last saving jar we had was one of the metal tins that you cant open unless you attack it with a screwdriver, so I was curious to try this one out! The box is fairly plain, with a picture of the coin saver filled with pennies, and and tells us that the jar 'digitally counts your coins andf helps save money for those special treats' - well, I could use a few of those!!

We opened it up, and had to unscrew the battery compartment that was on the inside of the lid and inserted 2 AA batteries. Screw the lid on, and its ready to go!

On top of the lid is a coin slot, and a digital coin reader. As you push the coins through, the reader first tells you what coin you have just inserted, ie 10p, then shows you the full total of what is in the jar.

We did find when adding the coins there were a few things to remember - first, you need to push the coins quite hard through the slot, I dont know if this is because its new and it will eventually ease off or if its for a reason, only time will tell! Also you need to pause between each coin, otherwise the counter doesnt register the coins added. My youngest got carried away and was pushing some through quickly and I noticed it hadnt registered one or two, so we had to take the lid off and use the reset button and start all over again!

That is another downside to the coin counter, is that you cannot manually adjust it yourself. After a skint tooth fairy emergency last week, we had to dip into the jar and now I have to empty it out again to reset it as I cant adjust it myself, although I am sure the kids wont mind! It would be easier of you could just adjust it yourself rather than having to keep resetting it every time.

I have heard other people say that not all coin counters register all the coins. So far we have tried everything except a £2 coin as we dont seem to have had one for a while! Everything else has registered fine, I will update the review when we have tried a £2 coin and let you all know if it works!

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A clever little device

This was one of the presents the boyfriend and I recieved from my parents this christmas - and it was a pretty good choice . We already have a terramundi money pot (one of the ones you have to smash open) in which we store our £2 coins, but we needed something else in which to put the odd bit of loose change - before we got this coin counting jar, it was just languishing in a vase .

The packaging showed the jar pretty much as above , and explained that when coins were pushed through the slot, the digital display would ratchet up a tally, letting you know how much you'd saved so far . Upon getting it out of the box, we discovered it needed batteries, and eager to get this set up and working right away, I pinched a couple out of the DVD remote control . Inserting the batteries does require one of those tiny cross head screwdrivers - the type I can never normally find . Whilst this would normally be a big pain in the bum, requiring me to go round to my neighbours to see if they had one, luckily we'd gotten some in a christmas cracker .

With the batteries in, it was time to screw the lid back onto the jar, and start slotting in all the change from our vase. One of things I noticed about the jar right away is the jar itself is actually made of plastic - a shame really, as I love the solidity of glass . However, this does mean that should this be dropped, it's unlikely to smash.

Putting the coins in was actually hard - 5ps and 1ps went through the slot easily, but other coins took a bit more effort to push through, due to the slot being partially blocked by the little lever that does the counting. Still, as the coins were pushed through, we were happy to see an accurate tally being kept on the digital display.

We also noticed that this jar did not seem to recognise £2 coins - not really too much of an issue for us, as we tend to save ours in the tarramundi, but this might be an issue for some people . We also noticed that once we stopped putting coins in (would you believe we had over £20 in loose shrapnel lying about) the LCD display still clearly showed the total . I think, personally, I would have preferred for the total to stop being displayed a few minutes after the last coin is pushed through, not only to preserve battery life, but also because, whilst a jar full of coppers might not look too attractive to burglars, a jar helpfully labelled £20.78 might make them stop and be persuaded that it was worth pinching!

The jar is nice and large, with only about a third of the jar being filled so far, so I imagine you could easily save around £50 in coppers and 5ps in the jar, much more if you added in all the change in your pockets, pound coins and all . However, whilst it is handy to have a jar that counts how much is within, there is no feature on the jar allowing you to subtract coins from that amount, which seems a bit daft . There are always going to be occasions when I need to take out a pound or so for bus fare, but there is no way to mark this on the jar. However, I find this acts as a deterrent against me pinching money for a chocolate bar whenever I fancy one, and actually stops me taking out change willy nilly, so perhaps is adding to the ease of saving.

The jar is very easy to open and close, with the lid being a simple screw on and off affair .

Overall, this is a good little jar. I didn't ask how much was paid, with it being a present, but I see that it is available for £7.49 from Amazon.co.uk, or even less from their various marketplace sellers . I do think perhaps the design could be improved, with some kind of subtraction function . I also think that it really would be better were it able to count £2 coins. But still, a respectable 4 stars .

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watch your loose change add up

My partner brought our digital coin counting money jar last year in the aim for us to try and save some extra cash for our wedding. It is a fab little invention as being able to see how much you have saved spurs you on to reach a higher total.

We purchased ours from Next where it is still available for £16.00, although after reading some of the other reviews of this product I think this is rather expensive and would suggest shopping around for a better bargain.

The jar itself is made from thick tinted plastic with a chunky silver plastic lid. The lid contains the batteries on the underside, but please note you will need a small screwdriver to gain access to install and remove the batteries. The jar takes 2 AA batteries, ours have been in for nearly a year and are still going strong. There is also a small reset button next to the battery compartment for when you want to start from zero again.

On the top of the jar's lid you will find the digital screen and the coin slot. You can place coins from 1p to £2 in the jar, it counts the coins by recognising the size of the coin when it is placed into the jar. As soon as you place your coin in the jar it is instantly added to the amount on the digital screen.

The only times I have had any problems with the jar is on the odd occasion when it has recognised a coin wrongly. But this is very rare and if you place each coin in slowly then it works very well and is hardly ever wrong.

We save all of our silver change in the jar and managed to fill it once where it held a total of £200 in the jar. It is a great way to save to see your money slowly building up and it also saves your purse from becoming heavy and breaking. I would recommend this jar to anyone wanting a new money box, it would also make an excellent present.

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A great gimmick but don't expect much!!

I bought this counting money jar for my daughter last Christmas. At the time it cost me about £6.00 but I have since seen them in a number of places for £1.99.

So what is it? Well basically a small plastic jar with a lid, and a slot to put your money in.

The jar takes 1,2,5,10,20,50 pence coinsand £1 and £2 coins. Each coin you put in the digital display adds up, so that all the money in the jar, comes with a running total on the lid.

So far so good. However my daughter and I have found that the coins are extremely difficult to put in. It is such a tight fit in the slot.

Another problem is if you want to withdraw some money. Each coin you remove needs to go back through the slot. Very annoying.

Another issue is when adding notes. Obviously it won't recognise them, so you find yourself taking a pound coin and putting it through the slot 10 times, in order for it to register a ten pound note.

The jar itself could quite easily take a £100 or so in coins, and is also very durable. Like I said it has now been running for 9 months, and the battery is still going strong, and the jar is still in one piece.

Would I recommend one to you. Well probably yes. They are a bit of a gimmick, and I note that Amazon are now selling them for as low as £1.45. Don't expect too much though - and they can be quite annoying.

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A great idea that all could do with

I always find that I collect mass loads of change in my purse, pockets, bag and in the car, and I wanted some where to keep it all together.

I then found the Digital Coin Counting Money Jar and thought it would be perfect for me to keep all my change in one place and I would know exactly how much change I had as well!

The jar is made from clear plastic and is in the style of a large jam jar. The lid is also made from plastic, but a tougher kind and is gray in color. The lid has a digital display in the top of it to show you how much money is in the jar, and just underneath this there is a slot through which you put the coins. The lid screws on and off the top of jar.

The lid is actually quite sturdy, and when it is screwed on, you can lift a full jar up by the lid and it won't come off, yet it is easy enough to unscrew the lid when you need to open the jar. The slot is the perfect size for putting all coins through, from 1p all the way up to £2 coins. The digital screen is clear and easy to read, so you always know what it is in the jar.

The Money Jar holds quite a large amount of coins, but of course the amount differs regarding on which coins you put in. About £20 worth of coppers and 5ps fits into the jar quite easily, and this is most of what my Money Jar gets filled with these days. The idea is simple and basic, yet it works really well and it is a great idea that I wish I had known of years ago!

These jars are available in quite a lot of places these days, but the best place I have found to get one is from Amazon.co.uk, where you will only have to pay £2.38 for one, where as some places charge around £5 a jar. I have had my jar about 2 years now, and it still serves me well, in fact the same batteries it was supplied with are still going strong.

I totally recommend this Money Jar to everyone, especially if you seem to collect a lot of change like I do.

I really like this Money Jar and I find it very easy to use. My family think it is a great idea too, and now most of my family own one too.

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A nice gimmick to the boring money box that MAY make kids save their pennies

My daughter was bought this for Christmas last year. I think it was bought from Avon as it was from my sister (an avon rep!) We have the pink version of the picture above.

It is of course a money box/piggy bank/loose change jar, whatever you want to call it. It has a plastic pink see-through jar bottom similar to the sweet jars are made like and has a screw on lid that holds the mechanism underneath.

The idea of this piggy bank is that you put your coins in the tension slot that is in the lid and it can tell what coins you are putting in and add it up for you. Simple and clever idea you may think but only if it works. If you take any money out or want to put notes in then you simply unscrew the lid, take out or put in and there are two buttons on the top with a + and a - sign on which is obvious what you need to do. It requires 2 AA batteries to power it which fit in the lid.

So does it work?

Well it did at first and it's such a novelty item that my daughter was eager to put coins in and see the amount on the little screen go up. After a while though it started not recognising the correct coins that were slotted in. Say for example we put a 50p in the slot, it would see it as 10p or 2p. And if, like the other day, she wants to put a note in and you need to change the amount on the lid, you need to amend the + button, sometimes it doesn't even work when you press it. No matter how hard we pressed it. I have changed the battery also. And if you are putting a £10 note in, well you could be there for ages trying to amend it. I would say this is more just for your loose change.

Also if you have quite a few coins it could be a bit monotonous putting them in singularly and making sure that it is judging the coins correctly. It has quite a bit of tension in the slot so it can be hard to push the coins in. If you have problems with your hands then this would not be a good idea for you.

So with all that is said above we just cannot go by what the screen says on the lid to tell us how much is in the jar. We now just use it as a gimmick and with it being pink it is quite cute sitting on her windowsill. It does have a reset button underneath which you can press with a pen or something similar but to be honest it is just as quick to just count it up now.

It is quite a good size (16cm high by 12cm wide) for a money box so you could get a lot of coins in it. Depending on how much you class as small change (just up to 50ps) then you could possibly get about £30-£40. More if you use more higher coins of course.

Would I recommend it?

Well it might just be mine that isn't working properly and if it did work to its potential I would wholly recommend this item. As it is, my daughter just uses it as a normal moneybox. So yes in principle I would recommend it as a product idea and just hope that it works longer than a year! In reality it is just a gimmick for us and we just test it occasionally to see if it gets the coin right.

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5/5 for this fab electronic savings jar.

I was just having a nose on the dooyoo magazine and saw that this product had been mentioned! I have one, use it daily, so thought I would give my views on it.

I bought this in B&M Bargains for the bargain price of £1.99. I wanted an alternative to the tin jars that can't be opened as I like to see how much I have managed to save.... never much!!!

It's basically a large plastic jar, with a silver chunky screw top lid, the lid is electronic and counts your coins for you when you place them in the slot. It counts coins accuratly and can tell the difference in the sizes of coins. I had a look into the slot and it has a little metal section, when putting coins in this moves across to the width of your coin, therefore knowing what coin has been put in.

There's also + and - (plus and minus) buttons on mine, handy when you want to put a note in, then add the value of the note to the total, also handy for when you want to take a couple of quid out as you can minus this from the total and still track how much money is in there. The little digital screen on the lid is where you will find how much (or how little) you have saved.

My purse was always filled with coins but now I empty them into this and save untill I need the money for something.

A really good and accurate saving jar!

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A nifty gadget that is useful

A nifty gadget that turns spare cash into luxuries. We all have lots of coins in our purses or pockets at some stage and they can often become a nuisance. They are useful for giving to the kids for sweets but rarely do we sift through the loose change to pay for supermarket groceries or use in high street stores. This jar will give you somewhere useful to store that unwanted weight from your purse. Not only will your purse last longer without coins swelling it out and bursting the stitching but all this loose change soon adds up. It is a simple jar that will count your money as you deposit it so you always know exactly how much is in there. Set yourself a target of something special to save for, you will be surprised how soon the money grows.Push the coins through the slot on the top and it will keep a running total of your savings. It is a plain plastic jar, very strong, that has no appeal to a particular age group so would be suitable for everyone.

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I bought the digital coin counter from Avon a couple of years ago for about £10. The price now seems to be £3.50 on Amazon which is a good price for a fun present for that hard to buy for male in the family for Christmas!

The coin sorter is about 15cm in diameter and approx. 25cm high. There is a plastic see-through "jar" part and a screw off lid which screws on and off without too much difficulty.

The idea behind the coin counter is basically just a posh piggy bank. There is a slot in the top of the lid where you put your pennies in and a digital display tells you how much is in the jar.

The lid takes AA batteries to power the digital display and they seem to last a long time, I have not changed mine yet in over 18 months which is good.

The slot for the money is quite tight. It isn't too bad if you only have a handful of coins but my husband patiently put his 2p and 1p collection into the jar and had a very very very sore hand afterwards because it takes quite a bit of force to get the coin through which is definitely a negative and smaller children may struggle to get the coin through the slot.

The digital display is usually accurate, occasionally it might mistake a 1p and 5p coin and definitely gets confused with foreign coins!!

There is a reset button on the underside of the lid which is easy to press when you want to reset the display but not too easy to press by accident.

The jar holds plenty of coins, at least £50 of copper coins so that gives you some idea of how many 50ps and 20ps it might hold.

The product is of good quality, the plastic is solid and not flimsy and it doesn't feel like it would break easily.

On the whole I would say the coin counter is fun, accurate and novelty. For the price of £3.50 it is something that you can use, but in my opinion the tight slot might make it difficult for younger kids to use and therefore recommend a standard piggy bank for them!